NEWS
Recent press, public appearances, and other 50Y news
We have officially launched the second cohort of our Fifty 50 program.
The program is free, nomination-based, and directed to bio-focused PhDs and postdocs who want to bring innovation from their lab to the world. Join us to learn and meet other brilliant scientists!
We’ve launched Speed, a podcast for and about founders who move fast. Peregrine’s first guest was Deepika Bodapati, co-founder of Athelas, who shared some ways she and her team tackle challenges like getting FDA approval in 2 years and on a tiny budget.
Seth was invited to speak at the opening of Deep Science Ventures’ new PhD programme, the Venture Science Doctorate.
Harmonic Discovery designs drugs to inhibit multiple kinases in order to cure cancer, autoimmune dysfunctions, and neurological diseases. Inspired by their vision, Fifty Years partnered with the team to support their efforts to introduce changes to drug design.
Ela was invited to this year’s virtual edition of SOSV Climate Tech Summit. She joined one of the breakout sessions led by early stage investors.
The current state of collaboration and funding in biopharma research is broken. Because of this, life-saving therapies often don't make it out of academia. Fifty Years is proud to partner with Molecule to fix this!
The API Awards Gala for the Ambassadors of Polish Innovation aimed to recognize and appreciate extraordinary individuals who have contributed to promoting Polish innovations on the international scene.
The event we hosted brought together impact-driven developers, entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, & economists to explore how to fork capitalism to serve humanity better.
Seth was invited to this year’s Collision. Together with Daria Saharova (World Fund) and Michael O’Leary (L Catterton), he discussed the focus of climate VC funds.
We kicked off Season 4 of Translation podcast with Nick Goldner, co-founder and CEO of resistanceBio. He walked us through therapies that can beat cancer resistance mechanisms. In episode 2, you’ll meet Alfredo Andere, Kyle Giffin, and Kenny Workman, the masterminds behind LatchBio and a team who brings the modern computing stack to biotech. Nima Emami, CEO and co-founder of Avail Bio, joined us for episode 3 to shed some light on immune response to novel antibodies.
Fifty Years’ founding partners spoke at Latitude59 in Estonia. Ela’s panel revolved around NFTs and leveraging that technology for impact, while Seth and Joel Larsson talked about investing in climate tech.
Seth was featured in Kyle LaHucik's article about how social media platforms are changing the way founders/investors communicate and create community in biotech.
Hospital malnutrition is more common among patients than we’d want to admit. Despite current tech possibilities, little has changed in that area in the past years. HealthLeap’s app, NutriLeap, uses machine learning to enhance the assessment of a patient’s needs and suggests the mix of nutrients they require based on medical history, body measurements, lab results, and symptoms.
Fifty Years made its way to a list of top VC firms by Business Insider. Based on data collected by Pitchbook and recommendations from investors and entrepreneurs, the list comprises the top VCs that supported seed rounds of new biotech companies between 2016-2021.
Seth was invited to join Molly Wood in a conversation about Fifty Years’ thesis and portfolio, current trends in the VC world, and the need to support the initiatives and companies that address the truly important issues that can be solved with deep tech.
Humanity relies on burning stuff to generate heat and energy. We need both for many, many aspects of life: for production processes, to keep us warm, to prepare food. But even though our civilization is so dependent on heat and energy, we failed to find an efficient and sustainable way to store them - and this is where Antora can help. Their zero-carbon thermal batteries are a solution to the problem, storing and dispatching heat while being safer and much cheaper than other batteries available today.
Fifty Years partners with Zero Acre Farms to produce oils and fats using fermentation, not deforestation. Zero Acre Farms has developed a method to harness a particular type of microbe with an extremely useful storage mechanism, and is capable of producing oils through fermentation.
Our new partner, Valence, is creating machine learning systems that enable them to design vastly better molecules with much less (or even no) data, against some of the pharmaceutical industry’s most challenging and high-value targets. By rethinking the way deep learning is applied, they have pioneered multiple approaches that together solve drug discovery’s data problem.
In early December, Ela and Seth visited Slush, the world’s leading startup event.
In “Mr. and Mrs. Fifty Years: A Sneak Peek into the life of Ela and Seth”, they shared the stage to talk about their experiences as partners in life and business and how they stay on top of both.
Ela also led a discussion on Web3 with Aave’s Stani Kulechov and Seth joined Sean Hunt of Solugen, who told the story of moving from academia to entrepreneurship.
Relive all the talks on Slush’s official YouTube channel!
Mr. and Mrs. Fifty Years: A Sneak Peek into the life of Ela and Seth
Fifty Years, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based outfit with a portfolio that’s already rife with mostly deep tech companies — many with a good story to tell about how they can have an impact on the environment — just closed its third and newest fund with $90 million in capital commitments.
